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Sunday, 27 May 2012

Soho Food Feast - best school fête ever

When you are one of the best-known chefs in the country, and your kids' school is short on cash, you don't hold a car boot sale. You get some mates to cook some stuff, you sell tickets and you spread the word. Yesterday was the second annual Soho Food Feast, organised by Fergus and Margot Henderson, in support of Soho Parish Primary School.

It was sold out (and why wouldn't it be, when tickets were only £4?), but one of my friends works for a company that sponsored the event and managed to wangle a couple. We had the best weather of the year so far for it, and as far as I could tell a jolly good time was being had by all.

St Anne's church garden doesn't normally look like this

The deal was that you bought tokens for £2 each, which you swapped for little tasting plates of food, and bought drinks separately. And that was a very, very good deal. I'd prefer it if you didn't tot up the number of tokens I must have bought though.

Mahoosive Mojito from Milk & Honey to open the innings. Very restorative. £7.50 well spent.

Angela Hartnett demonstrating how to make pasta. She has really lovely aquamarine earrings

It was such a nice, intimate setting. This was the only cooking demonstration I got to see, but I will take on board some of the pasta-making tips. Adding a bit of semolina to my paste to give it a bit more of an al dente quality. Wish I'd asked where she got her sausages for the sauce though - they looked superb.

Melon, tomato and lemon thyme salad with jamón from Brindisa. Not jamón ibérico. Amazing fragrance from the lemon thyme.

There were many pork-based offerings. good for me, not for my friend who eschews the pig.

The Kopapa team - the Adidas-shod feet belong to Peter Gordon but I was trying not to come across as too much of a star-fucking chef groupie so I didn't dwell on taking pictures of all the chefs. My friend had the glazed lamb rib, which was delicious but tricky to eat.

The Polpo offering. Least successful plate of the day - the asparagus wrapped in speck with a little salty cheese was good but the baccala mantecato was pasty and flavourless and the meatball was a little bland.

Pork and beans in mustard sauce from Quo Vadis. Not the best-designed dish for eating out of little cups but utterly delicious. I told Jeremy Lee that he is my favourite person on twitter.

One vendor, which I will politely not name, was offering vegan, gluten-free cupcakes and calling them "a treat" and using "you can eat 3 and not feel bloated" as a selling point. Not my idea of a treat. Blood orange sorbet from Gelupo is a proper treat.

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